


Break Spell, Hawk

by shinychimera, Yeomanrand



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Adventuring Party, Arthurian, Brainwashing, Canon-Typical Violence, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Ensorcelment, Established Relationship, Fairy Tale Elements, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Married Couple, Mythology References, Not Really Character Death, POV Male Character, POV Third Person, Some Comics Bleedthrough, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, mentions of other MCU characters - Freeform, spellbound - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-01 17:23:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16288703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinychimera/pseuds/shinychimera, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeomanrand/pseuds/Yeomanrand
Summary: A hawk partners for life, and grieves for a departed mate.  But what does a roguish hawk like Clint Barnes do when divine rumor says that his lost Bucky may be back from the dead?





	Break Spell, Hawk

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sian1359](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sian1359/gifts).



> From the prompts "D&D Fusion" or "any fantasy world".

Clint finishes erasing the last traces of their presence from his and Natasha's sparse camp in the foothills and the loss hits him again, hard enough he has to clutch his left hand with his right, pressing the hard edge of the ring Bucky gave him against his chest. 

Natasha says, "You're no widower, Clint. I would know, right? We'll find him."

"He fell." The image burned forever behind Clint's eyelids, the sheer force of the dragon's breath pushing Bucky back off the cliff's edge and down an impossible depth. Forever in his ears, the sound of his bow and hide-piercing arrow clattering to the ground as he leapt forward with hand outstretched, nowhere near close enough to catch Bucky. "I had to watch him fall. How can he still be alive?"

"Don't ask me — but a Cleric of Fury wouldn't cross town long before Firsts just to tell us about a false vision, now would she?"

"Not that she'd know it was false," Clint grumbles. He heaves a deep breath and lets his hand fall away, to the pouch at his side holding the other ring. The sole treasure he'd taken from the bastard dragon's hoard, and only because Bucky would have liked the twining engraving. Because the wedding ring Clint had given him had vanished into that ravine with Bucky. Clint had hesitated a long time before bringing the ring with, afraid to nurture false hope. He's here though, isn't he? Hope doesn't need much nurturing.

"But no," he continues. "Whatever consequences she saw had to be important to more than just us."

It isn't a reassuring thought. The priests of Fury aren't known for acting in haste, and to have one knocking, well, furiously, at their door before first light boded ill. The bald woman in her eye patch and deep blue robes hadn't even given him time to fully open the door before she'd delivered her message: 

_"Go climb the skirts of Great Mother Mountain. Above her trailing blue sash, inside a well of darkness, find the crystal cave that preserves your lost heart."_

His breath had stopped, his tongue tangled and by the time he'd sorted himself out the priest had been walking away. He'd had no choice but to wake Natasha and pack up, follow the instructions, needing to find out what the vision means — no matter how impossible it seems, that he could get back everything he's grieved so deeply.

He breathes deeply and looks up at Natasha. She nods gently, and he shoulders pack, quiver, and bow to take the lead further up into the foothills. He never mentioned to his adventuring companions how much he hates it in the woods like these, where he can't see far enough, but Bucky and Nat always knew, anyway.

His heart squeezes just a little bit tighter as they come to the top of a low ridge, and he makes himself raise his eyes to Winding Sheet Falls, finally visible ahead of them. Something glints at him on the mountain slope above, like sun off a polished shield, or a shard of ice.

"Nat," he says, turning slightly so he can see her in his peripheral vision without losing sight of hope, "I think I've found it."

She steps up beside him, squeezes his shoulder as she sights along his arm. "It's in the right area. Think we can get there by mid-day?"

"If we push."

As though there were any chance they weren't going to push, anyway.

◎

Before Bucky's fall, the chilling climb up the side of a treacherous waterfall would be the most memorable part of this adventure. This narrow ledge would be crowded with the three of them, and Clint would be listening to Bucky play-moan about his aching thighs and his torn-up hands, and laughing and pretending he didn't hurt just as much.

Instead, it's just he and Natasha looking somberly at each other until they recover enough to prepare their weapons and watch each other's backs.

Clint peers into a narrow entrance framed by pieces of crystal, bow in hand, while Nat perches above on the stone.

He contorts himself to get through the threshold, and feels his way forward several feet before pausing to let his eyes adjust. The crevice beyond is dark, and the air cold, bearing strange sharp smells that have nothing to do with stone and damp. Ritual herbs, like Bucky used, only bitter like they've been poorly stored and dried. The sour smell of a long illness. And beneath it all a glassy, metallic scent he doesn't recognize at all — something completely opposite to the smells outside, of water and soil and growing things. 

Clint shivers. Barely inside, and the twisting cavern has cut him off from the sunlight at its mouth; even his acute eyes, wide in the darkness, can't resolve the walls around him. He reaches out to feel for the opening he can sense ahead of him; at first the stone is coarse beneath his fingertips but then there's the delayed shock of something bright and sharp slicing through his skin.

"Ah!" he says softly and sticks his fingers in his mouth before any more of his blood joins the scents in the air. His voice refracts back to him; not a true echo but a soft hum.

"What?" Nat asks, from a few steps behind him.

"Sharp," he answers, quietly, around his fingers. "Need a candle."

Her stealth is uncanny — the first he realizes she's gotten into her pack is when flint strikes tinder, and what should have been a tiny spray of sparks flares to life. Except that the light reflects a hundred-fold around them, even before one of the sparks catches in her candle-wick; they are surrounded by sharp planes of icy-clear crystal on every side, their multiple reflections shadowy blotches inside an enormous geode.

They both flinch back from the unexpected magnification.

"What in Gehenna?" Nat blinks, reaching out to touch her red-haired reflection. 

"Don't," he warns, a breath too late, but of course she can choose to touch a flat facet instead of a sharp edge. The soft atonal hum has continued beneath their voices; Clint rubs behind his ear.

"I thought it was ice for a second," she says, with a shiver of her own. "Let's find a way through."

They pick their way downward, through faceted columns and crevices, until Clint suddenly freezes, reaching a hand back to stop Nat. Their narrow passage has opened into a wide dark space in front of and below him, swallowing their small light and all its reflections.

Natasha extinguishes the candle behind him; he starts to object but pauses as his eyes pick up a dim echo of a clear cold light ahead of them, across the dark abyss. 

"That's not natural," he murmurs, mostly to himself; he slides his foot forward and tests the ground ahead of him carefully. When he doesn't fall to his death, he shifts his weight and repeats the process with his other foot. 

The hum grows louder, its dissonant pulses starting to blend into a more pleasant music, and the vertical bar of radiance ahead brightens just as quickly. Some magical light source? Or a distant doorway?

"Feckin' spells," Clint grumbles. Nat makes a soft acknowledging sound behind him.

All of his senses are wary, looking for signs of creatures or ambush or traps, but in the end it's his eyes that fail him; the floor ahead looks just like what's behind, but he discovers, as he's sliding off an invisible edge, that's because it's a cleverly angled reflection on a perfectly smooth sheet of crystal. He has half a heart-pounding moment to anticipate how painful death inside a giant gemstone might be before level ground rushes up at him, and he instinctively tucks and rolls to spread out the pain. He hears Nat grunt as she falls the same way, almost on top of him; he has to squint, can barely see her press an elbow to her ribcage while she tries to catch her gasping breath.

From down here, the ice-white light is blinding, shining down on huge slabs of crystal canted around them at all angles, casting hard but rainbow-edged shadows around the dazzle. Clint brings his hand up to shield his eyes and squints ahead at a looming, coffin-shaped crystal directly under the light, and hears Nat's breath catch behind him.

Not coffin-shaped. A _coffin_ , leaning up against or growing out of the wall, with a person-sized shadow, dark and unmoving, just visible through the sides. He shifts cautiously to his feet, fingers itching for an arrow going for his dagger instead; he's too close for bow already and he has to get closer to see. The hum is no longer dissonant at all — it pulses around them excited and joyous, giving voice to his own hope. Natasha hisses something behind him but he can't shift his focus to make out her words.

Even distorted by the facets of crystal separating them, Clint knows that profile.

 _Bucky_.

Not dead, not falling, his eyes closed peacefully instead of wide with fear. The more Clint adjusts to the brilliance of the light, the more sure he is, despite the differences: Bucky's hair is longer and neatly combed, his careworn blue adventuring tunic and breeches replaced with tight-fitting leather armor, his chest rising and falling slowly, his left arm barely visible through the fragmented light around him.

"Clint!"

He pauses, his fingers a mere hair's breadth from the surface of the crystal cage. "Nat, it's Bucky. I have to."

She's gotten close enough to catch his wrist hard, though he resists — that dimple on Bucky's right cheek, the softness of his skin, it's right there, just beneath the crystalline sheet. Can he break it without hurting Bucky? No it's hollow, it has to fit like a lid, there must be a catch...

 _"Clint!"_ Nat repeats, pulling his hand back sharply, turning him to face her. "Yes, we have to free him. But someone put him in there and someone may not want him taken out. What would _he_ say if you charged in without looking for traps?"

A shiver goes through his body, already charged with tension from the underlying hum. His free hand makes a fist and he bites down on the inside of his cheek, using the pain to focus on her question, on the thorn-wrapped answer. 

"He'd laugh his ass off and tell me I'd get what I deserved someday. And then...do exactly what you're doing. Dammit, Nat."

"Look at me." Her green eyes look back, worried, until he licks his lips and his jaw works and he nods. "Listen hard. I know how much you love him. I know he's _right there_ and you need to get to him. But you _have_ to treat this like one of our treasure hunts, okay? This is some monster's lair and that box has something we want to take away from the monster. You're the rogue who can get us to the treasure without getting dead. So what are the locks and safeguards, and how do we deal with them before we freeze to death?"

Only then does he realize just how cold it is in the room, and the temperature might be dropping. He scrubs his hand over his jaw and across the back of his neck, and looks at Bucky's tranquil profile again. The warmth he needs is...

Right. Treasure. Thief mode. 

He takes a deep breath and holds it, listening intently. No sound at all from Buck— the coffin. No sound of movement anywhere in the cavernous space around him, not even dripping water; nothing but the eerie, angelic hum he can feel in his temples, in his breastbone.

"Where's the light coming from?"

"Um…" she points upward. "Either the gaudiest illusionary light source I've ever seen, or the biggest score of our career."

He shades his eyes again to look up into the center of the brilliant icy glare. It streams from a bastard sword of sleek blue steel hovering some fifty feet above in midair, impaling an irregular melon-sized chunk of glittering stone. The hilt looks like it may just be carved of one solid pale blue gemstone; no other material interrupts its breathtaking beauty but the wrapped white leather that furnishes an elegant two-handed grip.

"Holy cats," he says. "Okay, one, that's a curse not a score and two, we need to get it down from there."

He still can't see any way back up or out of this cave, which he'll let worry him later, but it also means he doesn't know how they're going to get to the blade. 

His reasoning and resolve crumble, though, as he glances at Nat and his gaze slides back to the still form in the coffin. Grief and need and the sick fear of failing Bucky clogs his veins — what is _wrong_ with him? Buck would have a joke or an insult for him, something that would direct his rapidly scattering thoughts. Just the brush of their shoulders and a glance helped, sometimes.

"Why, Clint?" Nat sounds like she might be repeating herself.

Thief mode. The sword. He closes his eyes briefly, remembering a dozen different kinds of trouble from their past, Bucky's mellow voice at his shoulder: _Trust your instincts, birdbrain._

Clint doesn't know what danger he senses, or what tiny fact he can't consciously remember is sending prickles down his spine. But his instincts are saying getting to the sword is important. He straightens, and looks into Nat's eyes.

"I'm making it up as I go," he says, and then his chin lifts. "Are you carrying any of that fabric Stark made for us?" 

He pulls his quiver around to his front so he can find the arrowhead he needs — also made by their smith friend Stark; the man's a genius in a way that Clint finds almost as unnerving as the restless dissonance returning to the hum in the cavern.

"Making it up. Thrilling," she says drily, digging in her own pack. "What did you mean, curse?"

From down here, his angle is bad in terms of detecting traps on the weapon itself; he'd send Nat up but, the way he'd just almost lost his senses, he doesn't see her leaving him alone with Bucky and he's sure that's probably the smarter choice.

"I think that's a _Claíomh Solais_.They're supposed to be imbued with a hydra's blood. Legend says they're deadly to handle unless they're attuned to you — and they'll only attune to the heartless."

He looks up at the moment Nat tosses him a precious piece of Stark's material; it slides into his palm like fine cloth despite being made of metal and imbued with protective spells. He tucks it into a pouch to keep his hands as free as possible.

"Only thing is," he continues, tying off the lightest rope they have to his grappling arrow and choosing a target stalactite, "nobody's sure what exactly 'heartless' means."

He lets the arrow fly, tracks its flight through the air, hears the chunk-click of the grapple deploying, then tests the grip with a sharp tug, and by pulling his full weight off the ground.

They both freeze, Clint's toe-tips still on the ground and the rope wrapped around his thigh, when something in the room makes a resounding _crack_ and they're plunged into silence.

"Uh," he says intelligently into the space the hum had filled, automatically checking the ceiling for signs his chosen anchor isn't about to give way. Nat pivots slow and silent, scanning the room. Clint realizes he can see their breath.

For a moment, he misses Bucky not just in the everyday hopeless, aching way, but for the practical reason that his husband could have told them where the cold magic was coming from. Because it has to be magic. Like the sword.

Like whatever is keeping Bucky alive, entombed in crystal…

"Oh, damn," he says, looking to the coffin and using thigh and arms to pull himself a body-length off the ground. Nat follows his gaze. A hushed moment, and then the top moves, ever so slightly, changing the refraction of the cold light.

Clint feels his breath catch, hard, and he hesitates with the warring urges to drop to the floor and heave that lid off of his captive husband, and to continue up the rope as fast as he can. Everything here is strange and getting stranger and he just can't shake the sudden feeling the people or creatures behind this _knew_ he and Natasha would be the ones who came for Bucky. Knew their usual tactics. And knew where the gaps would be, without the skills of their fallen companion. 

If true, then he and Nat are part of the unseen plan somehow. Other pieces settle in their places: something as simple as a glamour on the coffin to draw his attention once they made it this far; the sword and the coffin puzzle enough to keep them both occupied, remaining in the room long enough to trigger...an awakening. And coffin lids, like other doors, open from both sides.

 _Bucky's alive! Bucky's here! Bucky needs —_ Clint catches back a gasp, ruthlessly quashing the gibbering hope trying to give in to the enchantment.

Even if he's still not quite sure of the _why_ , Clint would bet true gold Bucky will be headed directly for the sword, not stepping out of crystal with a smile and a smart-assed remark about how long it took them to find him. And he'd make the same bet he needs to get there first.

" _Damn it_."

"Go. I'll take care of him."

Trusting Natasha, he reaches up again, uses the muscles in his thigh to lift him further toward the sword, trying to focus on the goal ahead of him and not Natasha and Bucky — _Bucky!_ — below him. His pulse races, thudding through every ache and bruise he's collected in the day's climbs and falls, but time seems to slow around him.

Below him, Clint hears Nat's greeting, calm and friendly, but if Bucky answers it's lost under the effort of the climb.

He shelters his eyes from the increasing light under one forearm until he's close enough to spare a glance at his target. His heart rises up to close off his throat and he very nearly loses his grip.The indistinct shape he'd seen from beneath isn't so irregular at eye level; he sees a life-size hawk shaped from crystal-shot stone, still floating unsupported in mid-air, its wings spread and the blade piercing through its back until the point exits its chest.

"Thor's beard," he breathes, finally, unsure how much time has passed. He can't hear anything from below him anymore, and even as he shifts his aching grip on the rope, intending to reach into the pouch for the protective cloth, he calls out.

"Nat?"

His voice echoes off the crystal surrounding him.

"Natasha!" Silence. "Buck? Bucky?"

He's answered by a horrendous scrape of stone on stone. He risks a look down through the harsh light and sees the empty coffin — and Natasha, spread eagled on the floor next to their packs, but he can't even think through that terror: an erupting pillar of red stair-stepped crystal twists itself into a spiral reaching directly toward the sword. It's wildly unnatural and redoubled fear grips Clint's throat — fecking _magic_ , way beyond his experience. 

Near the bottom of the growing pillar, a hard-edged shadow in black leather climbs implacably, will soon catch up with the steps constructing themselves at the top, halfway up to Clint. The figure trails his left hand low at his side against the inner column of stone, doesn't look up, doesn't _move_ like Bucky — climbs like a predator, taking no heed of the risky footing. Driven, somehow, toward the sword, up the easy pathway being made for him as he goes.

 _How --_ No; the how is always "magic" and understanding magic was always Bucky's job. The real question is how Natasha was overcome before she knocked his pasty spellcasting ass into tomorrow.

Swallowing down fear, Clint shifts his hips to start a cautious swing back to face the sword, but the hawk's eye glints at him and time seems to skip another beat. A hand with a grip like stone grabs his ankle. Just below Clint now, on the stairs of his ruby tower, Bucky — real and standing and breathing — stares up at him with a blank, empty expression.

"Bucky." He can't help the warmth and yearning in his voice, even as shock courses through him — the hand on his ankle is clear as glass and just as cold, with no blood or bone within. The flashing facets he can see on hand and forearm, beneath the sleeve of Bucky's leathers, slide over each other in bizarre imitation of human muscle. "Hey, love."

Bucky's only answer is to set Clint spinning at a dizzying rate, but the revolution can't make him near as sick as the complete lack of recognition in his husband's eyes. And half of Clint's childhood was spent in a circus; his body blinks back tears and makes automatic adjustments to slow the spin while his mind crashes through myth and legend and cracks open a new and terrible meaning for _heartless_.

Dread questions crowd into his head. How far up does that cold crystal go? Bucky's whole arm? The shoulder? The contents of his chest?

If Clint's heart was in his throat before, it's dropped through the soles of his feet now. He catches sight of Bucky's pitiless back continuing up the stairs, the faint pale flash of his profile where he's checking for other attackers. Clint's hands and feet are numb; he can barely feel the rope beneath his fingers as he climbs hard and fast, trying to get ahead of, of... but the automaton headed up the stairs isn't _Bucky_. May never be never again.

No. He can't let himself believe that, and he starts shifting his weight to add a determined sway to the rope. He needs to hit the pillar's stairs as they form above Bucky, between him and the sword, so Clint can get to it first. And if he misjudges arc or speed or angle, he's going to be a bloody splat on the floor below.

Muttering a foolhardy prayer to Loki for the insanity of it all, he waits for the rope to reach its apex on the stair side and lets go.

He tucks almost as soon as he feels himself start to drop and his shoulder slams into semi-smooth stone before the jagged wall stops his momentum; he swears again but flips to his feet only to find himself one stair off from Bucky's implacable approach.

"You don't gotta do this, Bucky," he says, the last few words tossed over his shoulder because he's sprinting up the forming stairs, digging the protective fabric out of his pouch and balling it up in his hand. "You know me. You know Natasha."

He's not going to think of Nat in the past tense, either, and he lets his mouth keep running.

"We got that dragon. We looked for you. _Please,_ Bucky. You're not heartless yet. You've got one of the best hearts I know."

He slips a little when his next step hits a level shelf rather than another stair, and draws up short against the sculpted hawk, chest and fingers only just shy of the blinding blade.

"You took care of us, me an' Nat, when we were in the orphanage together, after the circus left us high and dry," he says, working quickly through the dazzle to get the eldritch cloth wrapped around the hilt, protecting his hands. "Found the three of us work. That grimy green place on the dock where we started. Remember?

"You took care of little Stevie, too. Finished fights he started, before the Furious took him in. But you kept us all together. And you've never been mean, never been a killer. Not like this."

He gives the sword a solid yank.

The sword comes free of the magically suspended crystal bird more easily than he expects; he loses his balance and teeters back toward the edge, both hands gripping the heavy glowing sword. Bucky emerges onto the shelf, relentless as ever, his shadow leaping out long and dark behind him. Even illuminated by the brutal light, his storm-gray eyes are almost as cold as the sword in Clint's hands, but there's the slightest bit of tension at the corners, furrowing his brow.

"C'mon...." Clint pleads, emboldened sparks of urgency in his voice. "I knew I'd mess this up, but I'm sure you're in there. I know it, 'cause I know you. I can see you doubting."

Clint pivots, bracing his feet, acting on the kind of impulse Bucky and Natasha had always laughed at in the retelling. With one hand, he holds the sword as far away from him as he can, ready to drop it over the side if he must, aware it would kill him to have to watch Bucky fall again. With the other, he catches the straps at the front of Bucky's leather armor, and pulls him in for a kiss.

Bucky's right hand seizes Clint's at his chest, their skin touching for the first time in eleven months, and his crystalline left hand thrusts past Clint toward the sword, but the kiss stops him in mid-lunge. Clint's heel crunches on the sharp edge of the crystal cliff, but he gives the kiss all he's got, Bucky's counterweight the only thing keeping his balance on this side of death.

Bucky's not kissing back, and for a second Clint fears he's frozen completely, gone crystal through and through — or is gone for good, that there was never anything left of his Bucky but this hollow form. Clint's heart starts to fracture like the broken crystal he can hear hitting the ground below them.

Then Bucky's flesh hand tightens on his and Clint feels the racing pulse in Bucky's fingertips. He wants to bring his hand up, tangle it in Bucky's hair, but he can't let go of Bucky or the sword so he simply tightens his grip on the straps. Breaks the first kiss, but only enough to place several smaller ones along his lower lip, give a soft nip like Bucky had loved to give him once upon a time.

"You _know_ me. I love you."

The stony frown deepens, the murderous determination in his eyes balked and confused.

"Bucky...my Bucky. You don't want me dead, you want me curled up in your arms in that stupid falling-apart chair on the balcony, soaking up the sunshine. You want me standing next to that terracotta basin you magicked up for me because I hate toting and heating water, you want me using it to actually wash dishes instead of just for shaving. You want me buying lager for the young fools at the tavern, threatening to tell the story of how we met…"

Bucky's eyes flicker right, then left; ghostly memories maybe fighting with the enchantment in his brain pan. Something more human looks back at Clint and restless hope starts to lift his stomach from his boots.

"Hawk," Bucky says in a gutteral whisper.

Clint nods, keeping his eyes on Bucky's face.

"Yeah, Buck. The part of you that wants me dead, that's a spell. Someone else's idea, someone who brought both of us here and ain't explaining why. Think, Bucky, think — you could strangle me with that shiny hand, or drop me off this thing in a heartbeat, but you don't want that, do you? You have to do it with the sword, right?"

"Hawk," he says again, more clearly, shakes his head slightly. Blinks, slowly, and looks between the sword and Clint's face. The crystal hand flexes, starts to stretch out for the weapon again but a shudder runs through his body and his other hand grips Clint's tighter. "More. Talk."

"Nat's here too, she would never let me do something this stupid on my own. You're lucky it's me up here — remember how she tried to set me right, after that sprite-thing sent me to steal everything off the altar of the Furies? I had a lump over my ear for a week, and you kept insisting on kissing it better every night."

Bucky's lips twitch, slightly, toward a smile that fades away again, faster than an afterimage of lightning.

"Clint."

"That's it, Buck. Can you take a step back, you think? I'll tell you more. I'll tell you how sweet you are in the dark, how ridiculous I'll be to make you laugh, how much I love to feel your heart pounding against mine. Just like now. You feel it? You're not heartless Bucky, you don't want to touch this thing."

A deep struggle trembles through Bucky's body but he finally manages a shuffling step back, then another, until both pairs of feet are on mostly stable ground. The crystal arm makes another swipe at the sword, but strong as it is, it can only reach so far without the help of the rest of his body.

"Listen to me," Clint says, low and intense, looking deep into Bucky's eyes, unclenching his fingers from the chest straps. "I really want to kiss you properly right now. Do you want that too?"

Another full body shudder, but Bucky manages to lower his chin in a partial nod.

Clint lays his free hand against Bucky's cheek. "I can't do that and hold this little slice of Stygian hell, okay? So if I throw this way over there, are you going to try and stop me?"

Bucky nods, to Clint's surprise, and his gaze flickers past Clint again, to the blue blade straining the muscles in his arms.

"Break… Spell... Hawk."

Before Clint can protest that he's not the spell guy, Nat appears at the top of the spiral stair. Her body language is deceptively relaxed but Clint sees the glint off the edge of her long knife, folded back against her forearm in her favorite "be-prepared" style.

"Hey, boys," she says, but Clint's still focused on parsing Bucky's strained words. He brings the sword closer to his body, sparing his aching arm the weight, and dodges another grasping half-lunge from Bucky. Nat shifts into her deadly feline crouch.

"Don't, Nat. He's, he's in there. Just a little forgetful -- we're working on it."

Bucky speaks again, through gritted teeth. "Break. Spell. Hawk."

She eases back on her heels, visibly reluctant but following Clint's lead for now, even as he dodges another stretch of Bucky's hand. The angle drives Clint around so his back is to the heart of the unnatural crystal column, where he can see the bird still floating in midair, looking far less anchored without the sword piercing its back.

The answer hits him like the proverbial bolt from the blue: Break _spellhawk._

Clint twists again, dodging the crystal menace holding his husband hostage and brings both hands around the cloth-wrapped hilt. Swords aren't really his thing, either, but the principle is obvious and he swings the weapon like a club, whirling the edge of the blade into the body of the false hawk.

He's expecting the referred pain of a heavy-momentum strike on a solid object. He isn't expecting the flare of blue-white light, nor the outward kick of power. Crystal shatters around him and the sword is knocked out of his hands. He's falling backward, and he has just enough time to start to feel panicky regret when he's caught around the ankle again by a hand cold as stone.

His body jerks with the sudden stop and his hip's going to be feeling that for days but he doesn't care because a flesh hand has joined the stone one and Bucky pulls him back onto semi-solid ground. Natasha's right there, too, her hand on Clint's bicep, but Bucky pulls him into a bear hug that Clint returns with all the strength he can muster.

"Hey, birdbrain," Bucky says in his ear, and his laugh's half a sob but that's all right, too, because Clint can feel Bucky's heart beating and nearly everything is right with the world.

"Great reunion, time to go," Natasha says, pulling on Clint's shirt, and he realizes the earth is _actually_ moving beneath them, the stairs cracking and collapsing in a swelling cacophony of thunder. He swears by Sif and Bucky swears by Frigga and they scramble to their feet and follow Nat down, all three of them focusing every last ounce of energy and acrobat training on leaping safely onto or over crumbling slabs, dodging through the shrapnel of falling crystals. 

"Don't suppose you know where the exit is?" Clint shouts as they reach bottom, and Bucky starts but then looks at him with wide eyes.

He licks his lips, then reaches his glassy left hand out tentatively to the rock face they'd fallen down, the one holding the cracked coffin. Looking as unsure as Clint is about what magic is left in the hand, he catches his lower lip in his teeth and touches crystal fingertips to the crystal wall. With the same unnatural movement as the pillar, the faceted slabs fold back and aside, leaving a much gentler stair back toward their entrance cavern.

"That's —"

"Good," Nat cuts Clint off, slamming his pack into his chest. "That's very good. Come _on_."

Bucky's new stone sorcery keeps them from having to slow down on their way through the previously narrow entry, and they scramble their way into the late afternoon sunlight. Clint realizes he's taken Bucky's warm hand at some point and he could shout for the joy of their palms pressed together.

They hurry down the steep switchback path together, and the rumbling of the earth has subsided by the time they reach the base of the waterfall. The shimmering cataract falls as peacefully as ever down into its tumbled white bed, over a new pile of freshly fallen stone.

Clint and Bucky heave a sigh at the same time.

"You two." Nat smiles at them, then raises eyebrows at Bucky. "So...?"

"I'm not sure what happened, how I got there," Bucky says, his voice still rough but warm and very much his own. "Last thing I remember is a lot of flame, and cold."

He's still looking sober when he turns to face Clint fully. "Thank you. Both. I'd, uh, hold out a hand to invite you in, Nat, but I've only got one free and…"

Clint sets his jaw.

"And there's something weird about it," he says, lifting Bucky's left hand with his right, and peering critically at the sunlit crystal.

Bucky turns his head down, uncertain or ashamed, so Clint can only see a crescent of his face.

Clint digs in his pouch, pulls out the engraved ring. "I stole you something while you were gone," he says; trusting curiosity will draw Bucky's attention away from whatever grim inner landscape he's exploring.

Bucky's head tilts, and then he looks at Clint and at the object in his hand. His eyes, ever expressive, crinkle faintly at the corners, shadows dissolving. The crystal fingers resting on his spread, ever so slightly, giving Clint space, same as he had when Stevie had led them through their vows to each other with Nat and Stark witnessing.

He looks up into Bucky's eyes for permission. "Yeah, spellslinger?"

Bucky nods, and this time it's his whole smile, broad and sunny. "Yeah, birdbrain."

Clint slides the ring on his finger, waits while Bucky holds it up so they both can see. Holds out the ring on his own left hand, too, dun and pink beside Bucky's lucent magic.

"There we go," he says, resting his chin over Bucky's shoulder. "Looks fine to me now."

"Sort of a mis-matched set..." Bucky says, half pensive, half wry.

"Pfft. We don't have to match anywhere but our hearts," Clint answers, and slides around into his husband's arms to make good on his promised kiss.

◎

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! There's a little bit of Arthurian and Merlin lore hiding here; a little hint of Wonderland, Snow White, and The Snow Queen, maybe; also modified Celtic legend and of course the Norse. 
> 
> Dearest sian1359, really hope you enjoy! Thank you for the lovely prompts, without which there would have been no story.


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